If you’re on the lookout for great shows, books, movies, and other memorable cultural experiences, why not let our staff recommend you something? This week, our crew shares charming bookstores, addictive social media accounts, riveting movies, and gorgeous stationary.
I know that, in many ways, Twitter is breathing its last dying breath, but it still has a few gems to offer amidst the wreckage, like this delightful account that posts old photos of cats. Curator Molly shares antique studio photos, postcards, pictures from museum collections and books, and other sources, all featuring cats of all kinds. If anyone can withstand Elon’s tyranny, it’s cats. —Charlotte Beach, Feature Writer + Content Editor
Frenchmen Art & Books in New Orleans, LA
I moved to New Orleans a few months ago, and my brother recently visited. If you’ve been to New Orleans, you know that there are an overwhelming amount of things to do, so my brother and I spent the entire weekend exploring neighborhood after neighborhood. One afternoon, we found ourselves on Frenchmen Street, stumbling into a bookstore called Frenchmen Art & Books. We spent a good chunk of time scouring the shelves and loved seeing all the local authors and stories shared. If you find yourself in New Orleans, this is definitely a local gem to check out, but my favorite of the week is local bookshops and their thoughtfully curated shelves. —Chloe Gordon, Social Media Manager + Content Editor
Each year during the holiday season I am sent a wonderful array of gifts from PRINT‘s partners. I’m lucky and the gifts are always wonderful design-driven items I use. But one company always out-gifts everyone else and that company is Sappi. If you were lucky enough to receive this year’s gift then you know what I am referring to. It’s a box within a box so beautifully designed, by VSA Partners, that you’ll never throw it out. The box is filled with greeting cards, envelopes, stickers and a pen (that’s even better than a Sharpie). After you use all the cards the box continues it’s life with dividers that allow you to sort and save greeting cards so you can find them when you need a card. I hope you got one, but if not, keep your eyes peeled because Sappi often releases some in the summer and at trade shows! —Laura des Enfants, Publisher
Strange Days (1995)
One of my favorite kinds of movies is late 20th century cyberpunk that agrees with Philip K. Dick’s fear of the 21st century on one hand, but also thinks it sounds kind of fun on the other hand. I’m probably biased as a median-age millennial, but I think the best time for this was the mid-to-late ’90s, when a lot of movies were centered around this very zippy, loud, aggressively stylish depiction of the near future. No one knew where things were going to go when the internet became widely accessible, but it’s clear everyone knew it was going to go somewhere weird, so movies like The Matrix, Hackers, and eXistenZ take huge liberties with their guesses. Kathryn Bigelow’s extremely weird sci-fi Strange Days is interesting for imagining 1999 from the perspective of 1995, so it feels a bit more like an exaggeration of a fairly recent present than a prediction of how the tide would turn. It has all the standard characteristics of classic LA noir, but turned up to 11: a jaded detective who sells grimy interactive videotapes (Ralph Fiennes) and an action hero reimagining of Lauren Bacall (peak Angela Bassett!!) navigating a glitchy industrial underground. It’s a fun watch, but by no means an easy one, primarily concerning itself with the politics of policing after the Rodney King riots and sex in the age of AIDS and increased surveillance. It’s heavy, complicated subject matter, and it doesn’t quite stick the landing, but it maintained a vice grip on my interest for two and a half hours, which is a very rare feat. The music is wild, the design is extremely fun on all angles, and I have a hard time not being immediately sold on anything that features Juliette Lewis doing impressions of PJ Harvey in glittery outfits. It’s on HBO Max! —Sarah Fonder, Managing Editor
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Header image by Rosie Kerr.